Month: December 2021

We Rise Episode #1: Women in Academia with Dr Aggie Hirst

Welcome to the first episode of the We Rise podcast! This episode we spoke to Dr Aggie Hirst from the Department of War Studies at KCL about feminism in International Relations Theory, wargaming, and inequality in academia.

Dr Aggie Hirst is Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory and Methods in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Her research is situated in the fields of international political theory and critical military studies. She is Principal Investigator on a Leverhulme Trust and British Academy funded research project exploring the US military’s use of wargames and simulations for teaching/training purposes. She is currently completing her second book, The Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military (forthcoming with Oxford University Press), which explores of the phenomena of play and immersion, arguing that the ‘flow state’ generated by gaming is being used to instil doctrine and cultivate mental and physical muscle memory in service members. She has recently published articles with Review of International Studies (2019), Critical Military Studies (2020), and International Political Sociology (2021) on play, videogames, and the wargames renaissance, and she has recently discussed her research at the University of St Andrews Visualising War project: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1717787/8763213. Dr Hirst is also a lead co-author of new IR Theory Textbook with Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2022) and the EDI Lead for the Department of War Studies.

Links to research mentions in the show about women in wargaming:
https://www.wired.com/story/women-wargaming-sexism-harassment/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/magazine/woman-war-gaming.html

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/tag/women-and-wargaming/

https://wavellroom.com/2021/01/15/wargaming-has-a-diversity-problem/

https://www.rand.org/blog/rand-review/2019/08/a-wargame-at-rand-puts-teen-girls-in-command.html

Imposter Syndrome

Camilla Østergaard Kristensen is a third-year International Relations student, who is interested in politics and international law. She is passionate about equality and social mobility, addicted to coffee, and a big fan of g&ts. If there is one lesson I’ve been trying to teach myself, especially these past few years, it is this: “If we…

Read More

She is not just someone else’s daughter, sister, or friend. She is someone.

Sofia Lopez Simpson is a second year International Relations student. Her hobbies and interests include playing the guitar and spending hours making spotify playlists. In the United Kingdom (UK) 44% of women have experienced gendered violence. In the United Kingdom, 153,136 of the sexual violence cases recorded by police, 84% of them were against women….

Read More

Spiking

Loura Al Alanezi is a Politics (BA) student. She is from Kuwait, and she reports on the topics of poverty, mobility, security and conflict. Her hobbies include reading books and painting. Recently, viral Tik Toks have shown people sharing their experiences of being unknowingly spiked via needles. Those who experience this commonly wake up feeling dizzy,…

Read More

Leila and the Wolves

Loura Al Alanezi is a Politics (BA) student. She is from Kuwait, and she reports on the topics of poverty, mobility, security and conflict. Her hobbies include reading books and painting. Watching Leila and the Wolves by director Heiny Srour thematizes the Palestinian cause and its intersection with women’s rights advocacy; the movie included multiple…

Read More

Gendered ageism: ‘I’m such a grandma’ and other stories

Saga Jaubert graduated from King’s in 2020 with a degree in War Studies and History, and is now studying for a Masters in Public Affairs at Sciences Po Paris. She is interested in international affairs as well as feminist issues, and how they manifest in everyday life. It is not rare, when hearing about a…

Read More

We need to take a more nuanced approach to female role models.

Megan Baker is a second year undergraduate History student at King’s. She is particularly interested in women’s unpaid care responsibilities, maternity leave provision, reproductive rights and violence against women. The bestselling children’s book, Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls has an entry on the fashion designer Coco Chanel, detailing how she succeeded in setting up her own…

Read More

Genius Debunked: ‘Smart Women, Male Genius’?

Inès Saada is a French Tunisian Masters student in International Affairs specialising in European and Globalisation studies at Sciences Po Lyon in France, and was previously at King’s for her study abroad year. “They say you’re the real thing,” says a reporter from Life magazine in Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel The Queen’s Gambit.  The “real thing” is a 13-year-old…

Read More